Published 10 February 2023 at 17.40
Domestic. People with higher incomes also have higher IQs – up to a certain limit. At incomes above 680,000 kroner per year, i.e. at the highest management levels in society, people become dumber again and the IQ level drops. This is shown by a new Swedish study.
Like the article på Facebook
The researchers have compared Swedish income statistics with the results from enrollment tests for conscripts aged 18–19.
The results are clear.
Most citizens have normal wages that clearly correspond to their individual intelligence. This does not apply to the top tier.
Similarly, there is no correlation between intelligence and the different degrees of prestige that professions such as accountant, doctor, professor, judge and politician have.
When wages for those who earn the most steadily rise in the Western world, an increasingly large part of the collected assets may be distributed in a way that is not linked to the factor of cognitive ability, according to the researchers behind a new Swedish study.
– The extensive amount of data allows us to test for the first time whether extremely high incomes are also associated with extremely high intelligence. For that, we needed reliable data on the incomes of all residents. Income information is usually missing for those who earn the most, but we have it here, says Marc Keuschnigg, assistant professor at the Institute for Analytical Sociology at Linköping University and professor of sociology at the University of Leipzig, who is behind the study.
There is a strong correlation between cognitive abilities, such as analyzing and planning, and salary for most people. But above a certain level, the connection weakens and a higher salary no longer indicates greater ability.
At an annual income of around SEK 680,000, the differences level out and the percentage who earn the most even pass the tests somewhat worse than them which is in the income bracket just below.
This is an important finding because the top one percent have more than double the average salary of the top 2-3 percent, according to Marc Keuschnigg.